We present an extract from This Plague Of Souls, the new novel by Mike McCormack, the acclaimed author of Solar Bones.
Released from jail, Nealon returns to the family home but finds himself alone in an empty house. No light or heat, no sign of his wife or child, it's as though the world has forgotten that he ever existed. Except, that is, for a persistent caller, a man who seems to know everything about Nealon’s life, his trouble with the law and, more importantly, what has happened to his family. All Nealon has to do is talk.
Opening the door and crossing the threshold in the dark triggers the phone in Nealon's pocket. He lowers his bag to the floor and looks at the screen; it’s not a number he recognises. For the space of one airless heart beat he has a sense of things drifting sideways, draining over an edge.
The side of his head is bathed in the forensic glow of the screen light.
'Yes?’
‘You’re back.’
‘Hello?’
‘Welcome home, Nealon.’
‘Who am I talking to?’
‘Only a friend would call at this hour.’
The voice at the other end is male and downbeat, not the sort you would choose to listen to in the dark.
Nealon is aware of himself in two minds – the voice on the phone drawing against his immediate instinct to orient himself in the dark hallway. He turns to stand with his back to the wall.
‘You know who I am?’
‘That’s the least of what I know.’
‘What do you want?’
Two paces to his left, Nealon spots a light switch. He reaches out with his spare hand and throws it, throws it back, then throws it again. Nothing. Half his face remains shrouded in blue light. He takes five steps to open a door and passes into what he senses is an open room. A swipe of his hand over a low shadow finds a table; he draws out a chair and takes the rest of the phone call sitting in the dark.
‘I thought I’d give you a shout,’ the voice says.
‘You have the wrong number.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘I’m going to hang up.’
‘There’s no rush.’
‘Goodbye.’
‘We should meet up.’
‘No.’
‘Not tonight, you’re just in the door, you need some rest.’
‘We don’t have anything to talk about.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure.’
‘I am.’
‘In a day or so when you’re settled.’
‘Not then, not ever.’
‘We’ll talk again. One last thing.’ ‘What is it?’
‘Don’t be sitting there in the dark, the mains switch is over the back door.’
And with that the phone goes dead in Nealon’s hand.
Nealon pushes aside his immediate wish to dwell on the phone call: who is it from; what is it about? He needs to orient himself in the house so that is what he sets himself to. After a quick scan through his phone, he finds the torch app and sweeps the room with the light at arm’s length.
To his right is another small room barely six feet wide, with a fridge and cooker, shelves along one wall. There’s also a solid door over which sits a junction box with a complex array of meters and fuses. The mains switch is at the end but it’s too high to reach so he drags a chair from the table.
He steps up and throws the switch; light floods from the hallway into the kitchenette and living room. The table sits beneath a large curtained window and beyond it is a sink and worktop with white cupboards overhead. Everything is flat-pack melamine, all the units date from sometime in the eighties. Against the left-hand wall sits a three-seater couch over which hangs a picture of the Sacred Heart with its orange votive light now glowing beneath.
He reaches out and flicks the switch. The walls come up in a cool green glow against which the pine table seems warm and homely.
There are five doors off the L-shaped hallway. The first is a bathroom with a shower cubicle tucked behind the door and a toilet beneath a small window which looks out from the back of the house.
Behind each of the other doors are three bedrooms of equal size with a double bed and built-in wardrobes. Pillows and duvets are stacked on the beds, but all the wardrobes are empty.
Back into the hall.
There is something coercive in the flow of the house, the way it draws him through it. These are doors that have to be opened, rooms that have to be entered and stood in. He catches himself looking up and examining the ceiling. What does he expect to find there?
This Plague Of Souls is published by Tramp Press
